Death of a Fool (16 page)

“Please. I want your second-to-second account of the Dance of the Five Sons. Fox will take notes and Dr. Otterly will tell us afterwards whether your account tallies with his own impressions.”

“I see,” Ralph said, and looked sharply at Dr. Otterly.

Alleyn led him along the now-familiar train of events and at no point did his account differ from the others. He was able to elaborate a little. When the Guiser ducked down after the mock beheading, Ralph was quite close to him. He saw the old man stoop, squat and then ease himself cautiously down into the depression. “There was nothing wrong with him,” Ralph said. “He saw me and made a signal with his hand and I made an answering one, and then went off to take up the collection. He’d planned to lie in the hollow because he thought he would be out of sight there.”

“Was anybody else as close to him as you were?”

“Yes, ‘Crack’ — Begg, you know. He was my opposite number just before the breaking of the knot. And after that, he stood behind the dolmen for a bit and —” Ralph stopped.

“Yes?”

“It’s just that — no, really, it’s nothing.”

“May I butt in?” Dr. Otterly said quickly from the fireside. “I think perhaps I know what Ralph is thinking. When we rehearsed, ‘Crack’ and the Betty — Ralph — stood one on each side of the dolmen and then, while Ralph took up the collection, ‘Crack’ was meant to cavort round the edge of the crowd repeating his girl-scaring act. He didn’t do that last night. Did he, Ralph?”

“I don’t think so,” Ralph said and looked very disturbed. “I don’t, of course, know which way your mind’s working, but the best thing we can do is to say that, wearing the harness he does, it’d be quite impossible for Begg to do — well, to do what must have been done. Wouldn’t it, Dr. Otterly?”

“Utterly impossible. He can’t so much as see his own hands. They’re under the canvas body of the horse. Moreover, I was watching him and he stood quite still.”

“When did he move?”

“When Ralph stole Ernie Andersen’s sword. Begg squeaked like a neighing filly and jogged out by the rear exit.”

“Was it in order for him to go off then?”

“Could be,” Ralph said. “The whole of that part of the show’s an improvisation. Begg probably thought Ernie’s and my bit of fooling would do well enough for him to take time off. That harness is damned uncomfortable. Mine’s bad enough.”

“You, yourself, went out through the back exit a little later, didn’t you?”

“That’s right,” Ralph agreed very readily. “Ernie chased me, you know, and I hid. In full view of the audience. He went charging off by the back exit, hunting me. I thought to myself, Ernie
being
Ernie, that the joke had probably gone far enough, so I went out too, to find him.”

“What
did
you find, out there? Behind the wall?”

“What you’d expect. ‘Crack’ squatting there like a great clucky hen. Ernie looking absolutely furious. I gave him back his sword and he said —” Ralph scratched his head.

“What did he say?”

“I think he said something about it being too late to be any use. He was pretty bloody-minded. I suppose it
was
rather a mistake to bait him, but it went down well with the audience.”

“Did Begg say anything?”

“Yes. From inside ‘Crack.’ He said Ernie was a bit rattled and it’d be a good idea if I left him alone. I could see that for myself, so I went off round the outside wall and came through the archway by the house. Dan finished his solo. The Sons began their last dance. Ernie came back with his sword and ‘Crack’ followed him.”

“Where to?”

“Just up at the back somewhere, I fancy. Behind the dancers.”

“And you, yourself? Did you go anywhere near the dolmen on your return?”

Ralph looked again at Dr. Otterly and seemed to be undecided. “I’m not sure,” he said. “I don’t really remember.”

“Do you remember, Dr. Otterly?”

“I think,” Otterly said quietly, “that Ralph did make a round trip during the dance. I suppose that would bring him fairly close to the stone.”

“Behind it?”

“Yes. Behind it.”

Ralph said, “I remember now. Damn’ silly of me. Yes, I did a trip round.”

“Did you notice the Guiser lying in the hollow?”

Ralph lit himself a cigarette and looked at the tip. He said, “I don’t remember.”

“That’s a pity.”

“Actually, at the time, I was thinking of something quite different.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. I’d caught sight of Camilla,” said Ralph simply.

“Where was she?”.

“At the side and towards the back. The left side, as you faced the dancing arena. O.P., she calls it.”

“By herself?”

“Yes. Then.”

“But not earlier? Before she ran away from ‘Crack’?”

“No.” Ralph’s face slowly flooded to a deep crimson. “At least, I don’t think so.”

“Of course she wasn’t,” Dr. Otterly said in some surprise. “She came up with the party from this pub. I remember thinking what a picture the two girls made, standing there together in the torch light.”

“The
two
girls?”

“Camilla was there with Trixie and her father.”

“Was she?” Alleyn asked Ralph.

“I — ah — I — yes, I believe she was.”

“Mr. Stayne,” Alleyn said, “you will think my next question impertinent and you may refuse to answer it. Miss Campion has been very frank about your friendship. She has told me that you are fond of each other but that, because of her mother’s marriage and her own background, in its relation to yours, she feels an engagement would be a mistake.”

“Which is most utter and besotted bilge,” Ralph said hotly. “Good God, what age does she think she’s living in! Who the hell cares if her mum was a blacksmith’s daughter?”

“Perhaps she does.”

“I never heard such a farrago of unbridled snobbism.”

“All right. I daresay not. You said, just now, I think, that Miss Campion had refused to see you. Does that mean you haven’t spoken to each other since you’ve been in South Mardian?”

“I really fail to understand —”

“I’m sure you don’t. See here, now. Here’s an old man with his head off, lying on the ground behind a sacrificial stone. Go back a bit in time. Here are eight men, including the old man, who performed a sort of play-dance as old as sin. Eight men,” Alleyn repeated and vexedly rubbed his nose. “Why do I keep wanting to say ‘nine’? Never mind. On the face of it, the old man never leaves the arena, or dance-floor, or stage, or whatever the hell you like to call it. On the face of it, nobody offered him any violence. He dances in full view. He has his head cut off in pantomime and in what, for want of a better word, we must call fun. But it isn’t really cut off. You exchanged signals with him after the fun, so we know it isn’t. He hides in a low depression. Eight minutes later, when he’s meant to resurrect and doesn’t, he is found to be genuinely decapitated. That’s the story everybody gives us. Now, as a reasonably intelligent chap and a solicitor into the bargain, don’t you think that we want to know every damn’ thing we can find out about those eight men and anybody connected with them?”

“You mean — just empirically. Hoping something will emerge?”

“Exactly. You know very well that where nothing apropos does emerge, nothing will be made public.”

“Oh, no, no, no,” Ralph ejaculated irritably. “I suppose I’m being tiresome. What was this blasted question? Have I spoken to Camilla since we both came to South Mardian? All right, I have. After church on Sunday. She’d asked me not to, but I did because the sight of her in church was too much for me.”

“That was your only reason?”

“She was upset. She’d come across Ernie howling over a dead dog in the copse.”

“Bless my soul!” Alleyn ejaculated. “What next in South Mardian? Was the dog called Keeper?”

Ralph grinned. “I suppose it is all a bit Brontë. The Guiser had shot it because he said it wasn’t healthy, which was no more than God’s truth. But Ernie cut up uncommonly rough and it upset Camilla.”

“Where did you meet her?”

“Near the forge. Coming out of the copse.”

“Did you see the Guiser on this occasion?”

After a very long pause, Ralph said, “Yes. He came up.”

“Did he realize that you wanted to marry his grand-daughter?”

“Yes.”

“And what was his reaction?”

Ralph said, “Unfavourable.”

“Did he hold the same views that she does?”

“More or less.”

“You discussed it there and then?”

“He sent Camilla away first.”

“Will you tell me exactly all that was said?”

“No. It was nothing to do with his death. Our conversation was entirely private.”

Fox contemplated the point of his pencil and Dr. Otterly cleared his throat.

“Tell me,” Alleyn said abruptly, “this thing you wear as the Betty — it’s a kind of Stone Age crinoline to look at, isn’t it?”

Ralph said nothing.

“Am I dreaming it, or did someone tell me that it’s sometimes used as a sort of extinguisher? Popped over a girl so that she can be carried off unseen? Origin,” he suggested facetiously, “of the phrase ‘undercover girl’? Or ‘undercover man,’ of course.”

Ralph said quickly and easily, “They used to get up to some such capers, I believe, but I can’t see how they managed to carry anybody away. My arms are
outside
the skirt thing, you know.”

“I thought I noticed openings at the sides.”

“Well — yes. But with the struggle that would go on —”

“Perhaps,” Alleyn said, “the victim didn’t struggle.”

The door opened and Trixie staggered in with two great buckets of coal.

“Axcuse me, sir,” she said. “You-all must be starved with cold. Boy’s never handy when wanted.”

Ralph had made a movement towards her as if to take her load, but had checked awkwardly.

Alleyn said, “That’s much too heavy for you. Give them to me.”

“Let be, sir,” she said, “no need.”

She was too quick for him. She set one bucket on the hearth and, with a sturdy economy of movement, shot half the contents of the other on the fire. The knot of reddish hair shone on the nape of her neck. Alleyn was reminded of a Brueghel peasant. She straightened herself easily and turned. Her face, blunt and acquiescent, held, he thought, its own secrets and, in its mode, was attractive.

She glanced at Ralph and her mouth widened.

“You don’t look too clever yourself, then, Mr. Ralph,” she said. “Last night’s ghastly business has overset us all, I reckon.”

“I’m all right,” Ralph muttered.

“Will there be anything, sir?” Trixie asked Alleyn pleasantly.

“Nothing at the moment, thank you. Later on in the day sometime, when you’re not too busy, I might ask for two words with you.”

“Just ax,” she said. “I’m willing if wanted.”

She smiled quite broadly at Ralph Stayne. “Bean’t I, Mr. Ralph?” she asked placidly and went away, swinging her empty bucket.

“Oh,
God
!” Ralph burst out, and, before any of them could speak, he was gone, slamming the door behind him.

“Shall I —?” Fox said and got to his feet.

“Let him be.”

They heard an outer door slam.

“
Well
!” Dr. Otterly exclaimed with mild concern, “I must say I’d never thought of
that
!”

“And nor, you may depend upon it,” Alleyn said, “has Camilla.”

When afternoon closing-time came, Trixie pulled down the bar shutters and locked them. Simon Begg went into the Private. There was a telephone in the passage outside the Private and he had put a call through to his bookmaker. He wanted, if he could, to get the results of the 1.30 at Sandown. Teutonic Dancer was a rank outsider. He’d backed it both ways for a great deal more than he could afford to lose and had already begun to feel that, if he did lose, it would in some vague way be Mrs. Bünz’s fault. This was both ungracious and illogical.

For many reasons, Mrs. Bünz was the last person he wanted to see and, for an equal number of contradictory ones, she was the first. And there she was, the picture of uncertainty and alarm, huddled, snuffling, over the parlour fire with her dreadful cold and her eternal notebooks.

She had bought a car from Simon, she might be his inspiration in a smashing win. One way and another, they had done business together. He produced a wan echo of his usual manner.

“Hullo-’llo! And how’s Mrs. B. today?” asked Simon.

“Unwell. I have caught a severe cold in the head. Also, I have received a great shawk. Last night in the pawk was a terrible, terrible shawk.”

“You can say that again,” he agreed glumly, and applied himself to the
Sporting News
.

Suddenly, they both said together, “As a matter of fact—” and stopped, astonished and disconcerted.

“Ladies first,” said Simon.

“Thank you. I was about to say that, as a matter of fact, I would suggest that our little transaction — Ach! How shall I say it? — should remain, perhaps —”

“Confidential?” he ventured eagerly.

“That is the word for which I sought. Confidential.”

“I’m all for it, Mrs. B. I was going to make the same suggestion myself. Suits me.”

“I am immensely relieved. Immensely. I thank you, Wing-Commander. I trust, at the same time — you do not think — it would be so shawkink — if—”

“Eh?” He looked up from his paper to stare at her. “What’s that? No, no, no, Mrs. B. Not to worry. Not a chance. The idea’s laughable.”

“To me it is not amusink but I am glad you find it so,” Mrs. Bünz said stuffily. “You read something of interest, perhaps, in your newspaper?”

“I’m waiting. Teutonic Dancer. Get me? The one-thirty?”

Mrs. Bünz shuddered.

“Oh, well!” he said. “There you are. I follow the form as a general thing. Don’t go much for gimmicks. Still! Talk about coincidence! You couldn’t go past it, really, could you?” He raised an admonitory finger. The telephone had begun to ring in the passage. “My call,” he said. “This is it. Keep your fingers crossed, Mrs. B.”

He darted out of the room.

Mrs. Bünz, left alone, breathed uncomfortably through her mouth, blew her nose and clocked her tongue against her palate. “Dar,” she breathed.

Fox came down the passage past Simon, who was saying, “Hold the line, please, miss, for Pete’s sake. Hold the line,” and entered the parlour.

“Mrs. Burns?” he asked.

Mrs. Bünz, though she eyed him with evident misgivings, rallied sufficiently to correct him. “
Eü, eü, eü
,” she demonstrated windily through her cold. “Bünz.”

“Now that’s
very
interesting,” Fox said beaming at her. “That’s a noise, if you will excuse me referring to it as such, that we don’t make use of in English, do we? Would it be the same, now, as the sound in the French
eu
?” He arranged his sedate mouth in an agonized pout. “
Deux diseuses
,” said Mr. Fox by way of illustration. “Not that I get beyond a very rough approximation, I’m afraid.”

“It is not the same at all.
Bünz
.”

“Bünz,” mouthed Mr. Fox.

“Your accent is not perfect.”

“I know that,” he agreed heavily. “In the meantime, I’m forgetting my job. Mr. Alleyn presents his compliments and wonders if you’d be kind enough to give him a few minutes.”

“Ach! I too am forgetting. You are the police.”

“You wouldn’t think so, the way I’m running on, would you?”

(Alleyn had said, “If she was an anti-Nazi refugee, she’ll think we’re ruthless automatons. Jolly her along a bit.”)

Mrs. Bünz gathered herself together and followed Fox. In the passage, Simon Begg was saying, “Look, old boy,
all
I’m asking for is the gen on the one-thirty. Look, old boy —”

Fox opened the door of the sitting-room and announced her.

“Mrs. Bünz,” he said quite successfully.

As she advanced into the room Alleyn seemed to see, not so much a middle-aged German, as the generalization of a species. Mrs. Bünz was the lady who sits near the front at lectures and always asks questions. She has an enthusiasm for obscure musicians, stands nearest to guides, keeps handicraft shops of the better class and reads Rabindranath Tagore. She weaves, forms circles, gives talks, hand-throws pots and designs book-plates. She is sometimes a vegetarian, though not always a crank. Occasionally, she is an expert.

She walked slowly into the room and kept her gaze fixed on Alleyn. “She is afraid of me,” he thought.

“This is Mr. Alleyn, Mrs. Bünz,” Dr. Otterly said.

Alleyn shook hands with her. Her own short stubby hand was tremulous and the palm was damp. At his invitation, she perched warily on a chair. Fox sat down behind her and palmed his notebook out of his pocket.

“Mrs. Bünz,” Alleyn said, “in a minute or two I’m going to throw myself on your mercy.”

She blinked at him.

“Zo?” said Mrs. Bünz.

“I understand you’re an expert on folklore and, if ever anybody needed an expert, we do.”

“I have gone a certain way.”

“Dr. Otterly tells me,” Alleyn said, to that gentleman’s astonishment, “that you have probably gone as far as anyone in England.”

“Zo,” she said, with a magnificent inclination towards Otterly.

“But, before we talk about that, I suppose I’d better ask you the usual routine questions. Let’s get them over as soon as possible. I’m told that you gave Mr. William Andersen a lift —”

They were off again on the old trail, Alleyn thought dejectedly, and not getting much further along it. Mrs. Bünz’s account of the Guiser’s hitch-hike corresponded with what he had already been told.

“I was so delighted to drive him,” she began nervously. “It was a great pleasure to me. Once or twice I attempted, tactfully, to a little draw him out, but he was, I found, angry, and not inclined for cawnversation.”

“Did he say anything at all, do you remember?”

“To my recollection he spoke only twice. To begin with, he invited me by gesture to stop and, when I did so, he asked me in his splendid,
splendid
rich dialect, ‘Be you goink up-alongk?’
On
the drive, he remarked that when he found Mr. Ernie Andersen he would have the skin off of his body. Those, however, were his only remarks.”

“And when you arrived?”

“He descended and hurried away.”

“And what,” Alleyn asked, “did you do?”

The effect of the question, casually put, upon Mrs. Bünz was extraordinary. She seemed to flinch back into her clothes as a tortoise into its shell.

“When you got there, you know,” Alleyn gently prompted her. “What did you do?”

Mrs. Bünz said in a cold-thickened voice, “I became a spectator. Of course.”

“Where did you stand?”

Her head sank a little further into her shoulders.

“Inside the archway.”

“The archway by the house as you come in?”

“Yes.”

“And, from there, you watched the dance?”

Mrs. Bünz wetted her lips and nodded.

“That must have been an absorbing experience. Had you any idea of what was in store for you?”

“Ach! No! No, I swear it! No!” she almost shouted.

“I meant,” Alleyn said, “in respect of the dance itself.”

“The dance,” Mrs. Bünz said in a strangulated croak, “is unique.”

“Was it all that you expected?”

“But, of course!” She gave a little gasp and appeared to be horror-stricken. “Really,” Alleyn thought, “I seem to be having almost too much success with Mrs. Bünz. Every shy a coconut.”

She had embarked on an elaborate explanation. All folk dance and drama had a common origin. One expected certain elements. The amazing thing about the Five Sons was that it combined so rich an assortment of these elements as well as some remarkable features of its own. “It has everythink. But everythink,” she said and was plagued by a Gargantuan sneeze.

“And did they do it well?”

Mrs. Bünz said they did it wonderfully well. The best performance for sheer execution in England. She rallied from whatever shock she had suffered and began to talk incomprehensibly of galleys, split-jumps and double capers. Not only did she remember every move of the Five Sons and the Fool in their twice-repeated dance, but she had noted the positions of the Betty and Hobby. She remembered how these two pranced round the perimeter and how, later on, the Betty chased the young men and flung his skirts over their heads and the Hobby stood as an image behind the dolmen. She remembered everything.

“This is astonishing,” he said, “for you to retain the whole thing, I mean, after seeing it only once. Extraordinary. How do you do it?”

“I–I — have a very good memory,” said Mrs. Bünz and gave an agonized little laugh. “In such matters my memory is phenomenal.” Her voice died away. She looked remarkably uncomfortable. He asked her if she took notes and she said at once she didn’t, and then seemed in two minds whether to contradict herself.

Her description of the dance tallied in every respect with the accounts he had already been given, with one exception. She seemed to have only the vaguest recollection of the Guiser’s first entrance when, as Alleyn had already been told, he had jogged round the arena and struck the Mardian dolmen with his clown’s bladder. But, from then onwards, Mrs. Bünz knew everything right up to the moment when Ralph stole Ernie’s sword. After that, for a short period, her memory seemed again to be at fault. She remembered that, somewhere about this time, the Hobby-Horse went off, but had apparently forgotten that Ernie gave chase after Ralph and only had the vaguest recollection, if any, of Ralph’s improvised fooling with Ernie’s sword. Moreover, her own uncertainty at this point seemed to embarrass her very much. She blundered about from one fumbled generalization to another.

“The solo was interesting —”

“Wait a bit,” Alleyn said. She gulped and blinked at him. “Now, look here, Mrs. Bünz. I’m going to put it to you that from the time the first dance ended with the mock death of the Fool until the solo began, you didn’t watch the proceedings at all. Now, is that right?”

“I was not interested —”

“How could you know you wouldn’t be interested if you didn’t even look?
Did
you look, Mrs. Bünz?”

She gaped at him with an expression of fear. She was elderly and frightened and he supposed that, in her mind, she associated him with monstrous figures of her past. He was filled with compunction.

Dr. Otterly appeared to share Alleyn’s feeling. He walked over to her and said, “Don’t worry, Mrs. Bünz. Really, there’s nothing to be frightened about, you know. They only want to get at the facts. Cheer up.”

His large doctor’s hand fell gently on her shoulders.

She gave a falsetto scream and shrank away from him.

“Hullo!” he said good-humouredly, “what’s all this? Nerves? Fibrositis?”

“I — yes — yes. The cold weather.”

“In your shoulders?”

“
Ja
. Both.”

“Mrs. Bünz,” Alleyn said, “will you believe me when I remind you of something I think you must already know? In England the Police Code has been most carefully framed to protect the public from any kind of bullying or overbearing behaviour on the part of investigating officers. Innocent persons have nothing to fear from us. Nothing. Do you believe that?”

It was difficult to hear what she said. She had lowered her head and spoke under her breath.

“… because I am German. It does not matter to you that I was anti-Nazi; that I am naturalized. Because I am German, you will think I am capable. It is different for Germans in England.”

The three men raised a little chorus of protest. She listened without showing any sign of being at all impressed.

“They think I am capable,” she said, “of anything.”

“You say that, don’t you, because of what Ernie Andersen shouted out when he stood last night on the dolmen?”

Mrs. Bünz covered her face with her knotty little hands.

“You remember what that was, don’t you?” Alleyn asked.

Dr. Otterly looked as if he would like to protest but caught Alleyn’s eye and said nothing.

Alleyn went on. “He pointed his sword at you, didn’t he, and said, ‘Ask her. She knows. She’s the one that did it.’ Something like that, wasn’t it?” He waited for a moment, but she only rocked herself a little with her hands still over her face.

“Why do you think he said that, Mrs. Bünz?” Alleyn asked.

In a voice so muffled that they had to strain their ears to hear her, she said something quite unexpected.

“It is because I am a woman,” said Mrs. Bünz.

Try as he might, Alleyn could get no satisfactory explanation from Mrs. Bünz as to what she implied by this statement or why she had made it. He asked her if she was thinking of the exclusion of women from ritual dances and she denied this with such vehemence that it was clear the question had caught her on the raw. She began to talk rapidly, excitedly and, to Mr. Fox at least, embarrassingly about the sex element in ritual dancing.

“The man-woman!” Mrs. Bünz shouted. “An age-old symbol of fertility. And the Hobby, also, without a doubt. There must be the Betty to lover him and the Hobby to —”

She seemed to realize that this was not an acceptable elucidation of her earlier statement and came to a halt. Dr. Utterly, who had heard all about her arrival at Copse Forge, reminded her that she had angered the Guiser in the first instance by effecting an entrance into the smithy. He asked her if she thought Ernie had some confused idea that, in doing this, she had brought ill-luck to the performance.